Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:26:51 -0700 From: "Tree" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [CQ-Contest] Elecraft K3 - more impressions
Made it back from KL7 over the weekend. I took my beta test K3 with me and we did a multi-single from KL3R in the IARU contest (with K6AW and KL7RA). This 8 pound box sure packs in a lot of performance. One option we suggested to Elecraft is a set of covers made out of lead - just to make it feel like it has more stuff in it. If you take off the top cover - the initial response is something like "where is the radio?". It turns out most of the radio is comprised of surface mount components on the bottom side of the main PC board. For those of you who have read their brochure, you know that the first IF is 8.2 MHz and this is where your "roofing filter" is. I have two in my radio currently - 400 hz and 2.8 khz. There is room for five of them. You can either switch between the filters and have the DSP match the roofing filter - or continuously vary the bandwidth and have the roofing filters automatically switch to the smallest filter that can be used to support the desired bandwidth. The combination of the roofing filter and DSP results in a receiver that will hold its own in any situation I can imagine. The receiver sounds great and is a joy to use on SSB or CW. It even did well decoding RTTY signals directly to the diplay during the recent NAQP RTTY contest. Too bad the firmware isn't all done yet - or I could have made some QSOs by sending information with my paddle and have the radio send it out in RTTY or PSK. On SSB - the transmit audio sounds very clean and I have gotten good reports on the air (including a rag chew with KC7V on six meters). The flexbility of the hardware is mainly determined by the firmware. Elecraft has obviously packed plenty of power into the processor that executes the firmware as the controls are all very responsive. I was impressed to find out that the squlech knob can be used for the RF gain of the second receiver if installed. The second receiver is an exact copy of the main receiver (again with up to 5 filters) and will enable diversity reception amongst other things. The transmitter puts out 120 watts - so you have a bit of extra drive power for your pair of 3-500Zs. :-) The operating controls are easy to use. It didn't take me long to become "at one" with the radio. The VFO dial can be setup for 8 khz per rotation, which is responsive enough for those fast sprint QSYs. This is with 20 hz resolution - so you don't hear the frequency steps (which I consider to be very hard to listen to). And the radio didn't turn into a pile of parts after about 7K miles on the tough KL7/VY1/VE7 roads. :-) I understand Elecraft is close to publishing their performance numbers. They want to make sure they have enough data from several units before doing this and they tend to put some safety margin into them. I understand they will give even the $10K radios a run for their money - and probably finish ahead in many areas. I am not a numbers expert and go more by the sound of the radio - and this one sounds great. Elecraft is hard at work finishing up the firmware. Some of the functionality is new as of a few days ago and we are getting constant updates to fix bugs and add new features. 73 Tree N6TR [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ CQ-Contest mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
